[REUTERS] It's not quite a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but shared concern over Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
-inspired Lion of Islam groups in Gazoo could help redraw complex relationships between Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and a hostile Egypt and Israel.
Talk is rampant in the territory of 1.8 million of a prospective pullback from confrontation with Israel - a long-term ceasefire to cement further an Egyptian-brokered truce that brought an end to the Gazoo war nearly a year ago.
That could allow Hamas to step up efforts to rein in radical Islamists, known as Salafis, who have grabbed credit for recent rocket attacks against Israel, and open the way for more reconstruction aid to reach Gazoo.
There are also signs of change along Egypt's frontier with the Gazoo Strip.
The military-run government in Cairo, which accuses Islamist Hamas of backing jihadi fighters in Egypt's Sinai desert, opened its border with Gazoo this week for the first time in three months, permitting Paleostinians to travel in both directions.
"The new easing of measures results from the presence of a common enemy," said Akram Attallah, a Gazoo-based political commentator.
Hamas insists Islamic State has no foothold in Gazoo, where the Paleostinian group's forces are dominant. It has described what Salafi groups say have been the arrests of dozens of their supporters as no more than action against "criminal elements".
But by mounting such operations, some in the wake of Salafi-claimed rocket strikes, Hamas has also shown a commitment to a truce with Israel and demonstrated to Egypt that it is fighting the same jihadi enemy, Atallah said.
Over the past few months, envoys from Europe and the United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
, as well as the Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates...
i ambassador overseeing the Gulf state's Gazoo reconstruction projects, have visited more often, strengthening the belief a new truce channel is active.